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13-Feb-15

From “Art Vandelay”, via email:

Get raped and killed, you cunt!

I wish you would die and get raped, you liberal cunt! Better yet, I would love to round up the liberals, communists, and socialists and Green Party people and give them the Holocaust treatment. Yes, that’s the right, I want a final solution to the Leftist Problem and see you and your type die!

13-Feb-15

On issue after issue, the public is on our side. Raising the minimum wage. Cracking down on Wall Street. Ending corporate welfare.

And yet, every one of these issues is completely and utterly gridlocked in Washington… We’re losing the message war… And that’s what we’re setting out to change.

My response,

Prof. Reich:

Welcome to a very small club of people who realize that we progressives have not been effective in promoting our issues, regardless of their popularity in the general public. I tried to start a similar organization to what you propose, in 2001, but as you know the whole world was sidetracked by the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. I also developed a Progressive Media Strategy and a proposal for a Progressive Subscription Service. Got nowhere. Progressives seem to prefer complaining to doing anything actually useful.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the efforts of Rob Stein to accomplish similar goals. He founded the Democracy Alliance, which has successfully raised a lot of money, all of which has gone to the same old organizations that haven’t done a thing to stem the tide of propaganda from the right. Stein himself may still be interested in working to develop the kind of effort you’re working on, although I no longer have any hope for effectiveness of the organization he founded.

You apparently have some influence with MoveOn, so please try to convince them that the kind of divisiveness they’re promoting by pushing Elizabeth Warren to run a primary against Hillary Clinton is not just useless, it’s detrimental to our overall efforts to convince Americans to elect progressives.

At the same time, as my friend Brent Budowsky points out in his latest column in The Hill, Secretary Clinton needs to overcome the siren song of political consultants who make so much money regardless of outcomes, and who consistently counsel progressive candidates to be as bland as possible. Obama showed in 2008 that a candidate who at least pretends to promote the interests of most of the people can create a tidal wave of support.

What we desperately need is a revolution of, by, and for the 99%. I would love to see Hillary be the leader of that revolution.

13-Feb-15

Sometimes it seems as though most of the people want to be fooled most of the time, but here’s a small attempt at bringing reason to bear against the vast amount of propaganda that keeps so many Americans voting against their own best interests.

12-Nov-14

(Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research) The employment-to-population ratio increased by 0.2 percentage points in October to 59.2 percent. This is above the ratio of a year ago, although it is still down by more than 4.0 percentage points from its pre-recession peak.

12-Nov-14

1. Each Year Since the Recession, America’s Richest 1% Have Made More Than the Cost of All U.S. Social Programs

In effect, a reverse transfer from the poor to the rich. Even as conservatives blame Social Security for being too costly.

Much of the 1% wealth just sits there, accumulating more wealth…

2. Almost None of the New 1% Wealth Led To Innovation and Jobs…

Over 90% of the assets owned by millionaires are held in low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, and real estate. Business startup costs made up less than 1% of the investments of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011…

On the corporate side, stock buybacks are employed to enrich executives rather than to invest in new technologies…

3. Just 47 Wealthy Americans Own More Than Half of the U.S. Population

Oxfam reported that just 85 people own as much as half the world. Here in the U.S., with nearly a third of the world’s wealth, just 47 individuals own more than all 160 million people (about 60 million households) below the median wealth level of about $53,000…

Solution: A Financial Transaction Tax (FTT)

More appropriately called a Financial Speculation Tax, it would help to limit the speculative trading that contributed to the financial meltdown in 2008…

It’s also a fair tax. While average Americans pay up to a 10% sales tax on shoes for the kids, millionaire investors pay a zero sales tax on financial purchases. They pay just a .00002%SEC fee (2 cents for every thousand dollars) for a financial instrument.

12-Nov-14

(Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) More than 16 million people in low- and modest-income working families, including 8 million children, would fall into — or deeper into — poverty in 2018 if policymakers fail to make permanent key provisions of two important tax credits (see Figure 1). Some 50 million Americans, including 31 million children, would lose part or all of their Child Tax Credit (CTC) or Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

12-Nov-14

(Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown ) [T]he big winners [last] Tuesday were a group that actually campaigned anonymously, not even whispering their names to the voters.

Indeed, these were not the candidates listed on your ballot, but shadow candidates that are not even people. They are corporations that have been empowered by the Frankenstein-majority on our Supreme Court to exercise the political rights of us real human-type persons. Only they’ve been endowed with far more political power than you and me, for the Court decreed that these corporate “persons” can spend unlimited amounts of their shareholders’ money on TV ads and other campaign tools to elect or defeat whomever they choose – without disclosing their names to voters.

What we have here is the rise of a stealth oligarchy in America. These politically shy corporations are pumping untold millions of dollars out of their practically bottomless corporate treasuries to elect Congress-critters, governors, and ultimately presidents who will serve their narrow special interests at the expense of the public interest. You would know these cagey corporate campaigners, for they are major brand names from Big Oil, Big Food, Big Pharma, etc. Normally, they’re not at all timid about promoting themselves, but – shhhh – they don’t want us to have any inkling that they’re running surreptitious, multimillion-dollar campaigns that have become a deciding factor in who holds public office in America.

One reason they hide their names is that they run overwhelmingly negative campaigns, degrading our so-called political discourse with the most disgusting, mendacious, and vitriolic smears against the opponents of the corporate-friendly candidates they hope to elect. They would never want such slime attached to their corporate brands, for it would anger and repel their customers, employees, and shareholders. That’s why their lawyers pushed the Supreme Court so hard to let them do their repugnant politicking, yet not have to be accountable for it.

Another reason that corporations want to “vote” in our elections without showing their identities is that honest disclosure would tarnish their favored candidates as shameless corporate toadies…

12-Nov-14

(Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, FreePress.org) [S]ystematic disenfranchisement may well have delivered the US Senate to the Republican Party. If nothing significant is done about it by 2016, we can expect the GOP to take the White House and much more.

The primary victims of this GOP-led purge have been young, elderly, poor and citizens of color who tend to vote Democratic. The denial of their votes has changed the face of our government, and is deepening corporate control of our lives and planet…

As the GOP moves toward total control of our governance—the media, the internet, the Supreme Court, the Congress, local government and, in 2016, the presidency—our future depends on knowing the nuts and bolts of how the destruction of our democracy proceeds, and what we can do to stop it.

My advice to Democrats: Campaign all the time, not just before elections, and campaign on ISSUES, not promoting (or denigrating) a person or persons. Back up the campaign by doing whatever is possible for the minority party to bring the issues to the forefront in Congress. Make news by trying to force votes on issues that matter to Americans. All issues all the time. – Caro

(CNN) Days after the Democrats’ brutal defeat in the midterm elections, President Obama said Sunday that he takes responsibility for his party’s poor performance at the polls…

Reflecting on what he could have done differently and what he will change moving forward, Obama says he will work harder to become a better salesman.

Obama takes responsibility, then says he should have been a better salesman instead of having better policies, then blames Republicans, then reverses his categorical previous statement that there wouldn’t be any changes in the White House. What a putz! – Caro

(Political Wire) “When President Obama was elected in 2008, his victory signaled a generational change and the prospect of renewal for the Democratic Party. Instead, the opposite has occurred. Over the past six years, the party has been hollowed out,” Dan Balz writes.

“The past two midterm elections have been cruel to Democrats, costing them control of the House and now the Senate, and producing a cumulative wipeout in the states. The 2010 and 2014 elections saw the defeat of younger politicians — some in office, others seeking it — who might have become national leaders.”

“As the post-Obama era nears, the Democrats’ best-known leaders in Washington are almost entirely from an older generation, from the vice presidency to most of the major leadership offices in the House and Senate. The generation-in-waiting will have to wait longer.”

(Political Wire) “In the last days before the midterm elections, Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist who spent at least $57 million of his own money to influence Tuesday’s outcome — more than any other single donor — set off on a frenetic get-out-the-vote tour to Colorado, Iowa and finally New Hampshire… After all that, Mr. Steyer appears to have largely wasted his time and money,” the New York Times reports.

“Most of his candidates lost, even though Mr. Steyer, his advocacy organization NextGen Climate, and other environmental groups spent a total of about $85 million — a magnitude greater than they had ever spent in any election year.”

12-Nov-14

MIKE BLOOMBERG TAKES THE LOCAL: Bloomberg’s $40 million spending splurge for this year’s election taught him a lesson for 2016: You get a much better bang for your buck by trying to tip state and local elections than high-profile federal ones. So the former New York mayor plans to weight his contributions more toward ballot measures, governor and school-board candidates, and away from House and Senate races, which have become glutted with outside money. “You can keep hitting your head against a wall, or you can go elsewhere,” Bloomberg said in a statement to POLITICO. “Change is really possible at the state and local level.”

His advisers are scouting states where big checks could help promote soda taxes, background checks for handgun purchasers, and nonpartisan primaries and redistricting. In the new class of gubernatorial candidates, he’ll be looking for candidates with business backgrounds; a willingness to challenge party orthodoxy; a record of working across party lines; and an emphasis on his issues: curbing gun violence, easing immigration restrictions, and reforming education and pensions. “Go someplace where everybody isn’t,” said Howard Wolfson, who was a deputy mayor and now is his senior adviser. “Especially … if those are the places where people are … actually doing something.”

12-Nov-14

(Reuters) Republicans will use their new dominance of Congress to repeal or cut back President Barack Obama’s health care reforms, approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline and trim the nation’s debt, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said [last] Thursday.

06-Nov-14

(Reuters) Victorious Republicans appeared at odds on Wednesday over how to capitalize on their new control of the U.S. Congress. Some lawmakers were eager to use their new muscle to step up attacks on President Barack Obama, while others talked hopefully of compromises that could lead to rare bipartisan legislation.

(Reuters) Staffers at the National Association of Manufacturers traded high-fives inside the group’s election war room Tuesday night, as pro-business lobbying groups enthusiastically greeted Republicans’ victory in retaking control of the Senate.

(Reuters) While the Republican Party won’t assume its Senate majority until January, U.S. stock investors are already betting the new congressional makeup could lead to faster action on pipelines and trade agreements, sending energy shares higher on Wednesday.

(Reuters) Republicans will quickly introduce stand-alone legislation in the first quarter of 2015 that would approve the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline from Canada, testing President Barack Obama’s resolve on the project, Republican Senator John Hoeven said on Wednesday in an interview.

(Reuters) U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, who is expected to become the Senate majority leader in January when Republicans take control of the chamber, on Wednesday ruled out government shutdowns or any default on the national debt on his watch.

06-Nov-14

(Peter Dreier, BillMoyers.com) Donors spent more than $4 billion in this midterm election. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, this was the most expensive midterm election in American history. This was a triumph for the Supreme Court’s Citizens United and McCutcheon rulings that permitted unlimited money to buy elections.

The biggest donors, billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, poured “dark money” — hidden from public scrutiny by arcane campaign finance laws — into key races that certainly helped elect Republicans. Karl Rove’s Crossroads organizations and the US Chamber of Commerce spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help elect conservative Republicans in the House, Senate and governors races. We may never know the full extent of the billionaires’ bankroll, especially in key battleground Senate races where they targeted much of their war chest. The Republicans increase in Senate seats – from 45 to at least 52 – depended on outspending Democrats by a wide margin in those key races in where Republicans captured seats held by Democrats.

(Reuters) Democrats hoped women voters would help them weather a tough election year, but weariness with President Barack Obama and disgust with relentless partisan warfare in Washington prompted many to abandon the party they had backed two years earlier.

So what you do is, you make politics so awful that everyone’s disgusted, and most people don’t want to vote. – Caro

What has changed is that they are now free to spend limitless amounts flooding the airwaves and hosting political events without identifying their objectives or individual donors. Americans are still learning the rules of this new game, which came from the 2010 Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United…

Americans for Prosperity plans to spend $300 million on campaigns around the country this year. MoveOn and Sanders warn of more income inequality and global warming if they get their way. The good news is that for all their expenditures, the Kochs’ campaigns so far have had mixed results.

But the challenge for those of us who care about protecting democracy from being sold to the highest bidder, and believe that freedom comes with responsibilities to the planet, the poor and the general public, is to make sure voters understand the self-serving agendas behind the claims.

06-Nov-14

(George Zornick, BillMoyers.com) There weren’t many bright spots for progressives on Tuesday, but if you back stronger gun laws, things went even better than you could have reasonably expected. The big news was in Washington state, where a ballot initiative implementing tough universal background checks on gun purchases and transfers passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote. The vote was already projected to pass and came on the heels of a mass shooting at a Seattle-area high school that left four students dead.

(Reuters) The California city of Berkeley overwhelmingly approved the first U.S. ballot measure to tax sugary soft drinks, and while supporters hope it will unleash similar efforts nationwide, organizers of the measure say their grassroots effort will not be easy to duplicate.

(Reuters) The defeat of twin measures in Oregon and Colorado that would have required labeling of foods made with genetically modified ingredients sets the stage for a battle over the issue in the nation’s capital, both sides of the debate said on Wednesday.

05-Nov-14

(Los Angeles Times) Adding to the onslaught has been a seemingly endless barrage of bad news — about Ebola, Russian hegemony, hostages beheaded in the Middle East — and a series of Washington missteps, including the botched rollout of the healthcare program and scandals at the Internal Revenue Service, the Secret Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The result is a surly electorate, and it goes beyond Colorado. Those not skipping the election in disgust are ready to lash out at lawmakers of both parties.

05-Nov-14

(U.S. News) President Obama’s unpopularity was a big factor in the Democratic party’s setbacks. Exit polls for NBC News found that only 44 percent of voters approved of Obama’s job performance and 54 percent disapproved. Republicans in competitive Senate races hammered their Democratic opponents for being too close to the president, and this was apparently a big factor in GOP victories in several key states including Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Montana, North Carolina and West Virginia. Obama and resurgent Republican leaders made some conciliatory statements about the need to end years of bitter deadlock in Washington. Obama’s strategists said there could be progress on legislation to overhaul the immigration system, reform the tax code and other issues. House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he wants to deliver results for the American people.

But these sentiments seem hollow because all sides are so dug in, with Democratic and Republican legislators aiming to please core supporters who disdain accommodation. “For too long, this administration has tried to tell the American people what is good for them, and then blame somebody else when their policies didn’t work out,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a victory speech Tuesday night after he won his own hard-fought race. McConnell is now in line to become the Senate majority leader. He predicted that neither he nor Obama would change their divergent views on the issues.

05-Nov-14

(AllGov) The United States’ high rate of child poverty earned it a poor ranking by UNICEF, which listed it at 36th out of 41 wealthy nations. Thirty-two percent of all U.S. children reside in households that have annual incomes below 60% of the national median income for 2008, or $31,000, UNICEF reported (pdf). In some states, the rate is even higher. New Mexico’s is 41.9%, the worst in the country. New Hampshire has the best rate, at 12.5%.

(AllGov) “We see from Denmark that it’s possible to run a profitable fast-food business while paying workers these kinds of wages,” said U.S. economist John Schmitt. “We Danes accept that a burger is expensive, but we also know that working conditions and wages are decent when we eat that burger,” noted Soren Kaj Andersen of Copenhagen. “We can still make money out of it — and McDonald’s does, too,” added Martin Drescher. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be in Denmark.”

(AllGov) The wealthy, often criticized for hogging too much of the nation’s wealth, also are disproportionate contributors to global warming. A new study from the Center for Global Development says the richest 2% of Americans are responsible for producing four times as much greenhouse gas emissions per person—53.5 metric tons of CO2 a year—as the bottom 20% of the population, which generates about 12.5 metric tons per person.